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Open letter from Alice Walker to Alicia Keys

Submitted by Alice Walker on Tue, 06/04/2013 - 10:03

by Alice Walker

The African American writer Alice Walker is urging songstress Alicia Keys to act in the spirit of her own people’s history of social action, and cancel a scheduled concert in Israel. “We changed our country fundamentally,” said Walker, “and the various boycotts of Israeli institutions and products will do the same there.”

Open letter from Alice Walker to Alicia Keys

by Alice Walker

Musical artist Alicia Keys is set to perform at the Nokia Arena in Tel Aviv on the Fourth of July, in defiance of an international boycott of Israel. Below is an open letter to Keys from famed African American writer Alice Walker.

“A cultural boycott of Israel and Israeli institutions (not individuals) is the only option left to artists who cannot bear the unconscionable harm Israel inflicts every day on the people of Palestine.”

Dear Alicia Keys,

I have learned today that you are due to perform in Israel very soon. We have never met, though I believe we are mutually respectful of each other’s path and work. It would grieve me to know you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by performing in an apartheid country that is being boycotted by many global conscious artists. You were not born when we, your elders who love you, boycotted institutions in the US South to end an American apartheid less lethal than Israel’s against the Palestinian people. Google Montgomery Bus Boycott, if you don’t know about this civil rights history already. We changed our country fundamentally, and the various boycotts of Israeli institutions and products will do the same there. It is our only nonviolent option and, as we learned from our own struggle in America, nonviolence is the only path to a peaceful future.

If you go to my website and blog alicewalkersgarden.com you can quickly find many articles I have written over the years that explain why a cultural boycott of Israel and Israeli institutions (not individuals) is the only option left to artists who cannot bear the unconscionable harm Israel inflicts every day on the people of Palestine, whose major “crime” is that they exist in their own land, land that Israel wants to control as its own. Under a campaign named “Brand Israel,” Israeli officials have stated specifically their intent to downplay the Palestinian conflict by using culture and arts to showcase Israel as a modern, welcoming place.

This is actually a wonderful opportunity for you to learn about something sorrowful, and amazing: that our government (Obama in particular) supports a system that is cruel, unjust, and unbelievably evil.You can spend months, and years, as I have, pondering this situation. Layer upon layer of lies, misinformation, fear, cowardice and complicity. Greed. It is a vast eye-opener into the causes of much of the affliction in our suffering world.

I have kept you in my awareness as someone of conscience and caring, especially about the children of the world. Please, if you can manage it, go to visit the children in Gaza, and sing to them of our mutual love of all children, and of their right not to be harmed simply because they exist.

4 Comments

If Alice Walker backed Obama yet again in 2012 like she [& her girl MS Gloria Steinem] did in 2008 [rather than Sisters Cynthia McKinney & Rosa Clemente] -&/or- if she backs Billary / Killary [if she runs] in 2016 like [her main girl] MS Steinem did in 2008 [until Obama locked up the Dim's nomination]... IMO Ms Walker's got NO right to lecture anyone on this score.

against the reverse holocaust that WE and the Israelis are committing against the Palestinians. I do not care if it is Glenn Beck.

However, I agree with you that Ms Walker shud be osctracized and labeled a member of the black mis-leadership class if she EVER AGAIN says a word of praise about the Obamas (I cannot say who she voted for in 2012). They are despicable charlatans and they terrify me. I do not think she will unless they turn out to be Jesus & Mary playing a joke on us.

Specifically because in 2008 Billary / Killary upped the ante' on Insane McCain's 'Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran' theme song- by exclaiming that if Iran did XY& Z re: Israel, she as POTUS would 'obliterate Iran' [as if the IAF & IDF are NOT up to that task themselves]. And though Obama has NOT been quite that explicit [yet], he's more than alluded to such a position multiple times. And twice Obama's followed AIPAC's marching orders that ex-POTUS Jimmy Carter be snubbed at the Dims' POTUS convention [in both 2008 & again in 2012] because the AIPAC / Likudiks were unhappy w Carter's book 'Peace Not Apartheid' [& also because of his public statements RE: the IDF's nuke arsenal].

And when Sis Cynthia McKinney went on that Gaza relief flotilla did POTUS Obama, Sec of State Billary &/or UN ambassador Sue Rice send a message [or even a request] that IDF's Navy should not attack / ram / harass unarmed relief-aid ships [w US citizens as passengers] in international waters???

So while Ms Walker writes letters to Alicia Keys, has she written such a letter to O-Bomber, Hitlery / Killary, Sue Rice, etc???

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